Will Wade did not waste any time making LSU a force on the high school recruiting trail again.
In less than eight months back on the job, Wade already has the No. 1 class in the country for 2027 by three recruiting outlets: 247sports.com, On3.com and ESPN.com. He locked in three members of the four-man group on national signing day Wednesday, a fast start that signals how quickly LSU is moving in the NIL era.
Wade’s rise comes in a very different recruiting world than the one that helped bring him down the first time. He was fired in March of 2022 amid major allegations of recruiting violations, but the landscape has changed since then, with players now able to be paid legally through NIL. That shift has opened the door for Wade to lean into the kind of recruiting he has long done well.
The current LSU team is built mostly from the transfer portal and overseas additions, and it is off to a 3-0 start. That group heads to No.
14 Gonzaga on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. on USA Sports. Wade took over last spring too late to make a real run at prep prospects, but the future is clearly being built around high school talent, and the 2027 class is already taking shape in a major way.
ESPN.com lists all three signees from Wednesday as five-star prospects: point guard Reese Alston of Houston Second Baptist in Houston, combo guard King Gibson of SPIRE Academy in Geneva, Ohio, and center Xavier Young of Faith Family Academy of Oak Cliff in the Dallas area. Alston is 6-foot-2 and 175 pounds, Gibson is 6-4 and 185, and Young is 6-10 and 250.
247sports.com and On3.com also rate Alston as a five-star. Power forward Ahmad Hudson of Ruston High is a four-star across the board and gives LSU another elite piece in the class. Hudson is also committed to LSU football coach Lane Kiffin as the No. 1 tight end in the nation by 247sports.com and No. 2 by On3.com.
The rankings line up closely enough to tell the same story: this is a loaded group. Alston is the No. 1 point guard by 247sports and No. 3 by On3.
Gibson is the No. 1 combination guard by both 247sports and On3. Young checks in as the No. 5 center by 247sports and No. 4 by On3.
Hudson is ranked No. 3 among power forwards by 247sports and No. 6 by On3.
On the national board, ESPN has Alston and Gibson at No. 13 and No. 14 overall, with Young at No. 18 and Hudson at No. 26. 247sports lists Alston at No. 9 overall, Gibson at No.
17, Young at No. 20 and Hudson at No. 18.
On3 has Alston at No. 9, Gibson at No.
16, Young at No. 19 and Hudson at No. 31.
The exact order shifts from site to site, but the conclusion does not: Wade has landed four elite prospects.
Alston has helped lead back-to-back Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools Class 5A titles and averaged 22.2 points, 5.3 assists, 3.9 rebounds and 2.7 steals per game. He also won the 2026 Guy V. Lewis award, given to the top basketball player in the Houston area and named after the former Houston Cougars coach.
Gibson averaged 14.5 points and 4.2 assists per game at SPIRE Academy while shooting 45 percent from three. Before that, he played at Montverde Academy in Florida.
Young averaged 10.4 points and 7.8 rebounds while shooting 61 percent from the field for the Texas Impact AAU team. He also helped the United States win the gold medal at the FIBA U17 men’s world cup in Istanbul, Turkey.
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